


As One Loves Certain Obscure Things

by lawlessearth



Category: Lovecraft Country (TV)
Genre: Canon-Compliant, Darkfic, F/F, Missing Scene, One Shot, Post-Kiss 1x10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:06:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27498430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lawlessearth/pseuds/lawlessearth
Summary: “Have you…ever…?” Christina asks.Ruby notes that her hesitation is not from shyness or consideration. Rather, it is curiosity and something less innocent. With a tilt of her head, Ruby admits, “No, it’s my first time,” and watches as Christina digests this information thoughtfully.It is and it isn’t, for both of them.
Relationships: Ruby Baptiste/Christina Braithwhite
Comments: 25
Kudos: 120





	As One Loves Certain Obscure Things

**Author's Note:**

> This is sorta connected to my first fic but it's not necessary to read the other for context on this one.

It takes Ruby by surprise. Not the kiss itself but the way Christina restrains herself even after Ruby yields.

They part after less than a second, noses brushing each other. Ruby opens her eyes without realizing Christina’s hands are cupping her cheeks. They are warm, her hands, like her lips.

Christina is gazing at her intensely, searchingly, and for a moment Ruby worries something in her countenance might betray her. She has not really come to this with the intention of seduction. She’s barely even made up her mind to do as Leti asks. But in a rare of moment of disarray, Christina herself gives her the idea for what she needs. Her blood in a glass vial.

Still, the kiss is not the plan. Neither are the feelings it unexpectedly evokes.

“Have you…ever…?” Christina asks.

Ruby notes that her hesitation is not from shyness or consideration. Rather, it is curiosity and something less innocent. With a tilt of her head, Ruby admits, “No, it’s my first time,” and watches as Christina digests this information thoughtfully.

It is and it isn’t, for both of them.

Christina doesn’t probe any further and Ruby is grateful for that. Whatever she thinks of Ruby’s reasons, Christina seems to feel no urgent need to find out. Her eyes have focused with intent on Ruby’s mouth and Ruby realizes that she has but to lean forward to make the invitation known. So, she does and Christina sighs against her lips.

The next kiss is more deliberate, hotter. Christina’s lips mold against Ruby’s, tongue teasingly brushing her bottom one, leaving Ruby short of breath, her nerves tingling. Lithe hands slide down her back, along her sides, tugging her closer, as Christina opens her mouth hungrily over hers. Her perfume engulfs, golden hair falling around her face like a shroud. Her tongue probes until Ruby parts her quivering lips, allowing the kiss to deepen.

“I want to fuck you,” Christina says languidly when they finally part. She says it without preamble or the least bit of flourish. “On the bed,” she qualifies when Ruby continues to stare at her in silence.

“Anybody tell you how rude you are?” Ruby finally says in exasperation.

Christina merely presses her lips together, eyes shining with a kind of playful irreverence. “You’re the first,” she declares as she holds her hand out, palm up, brows raised expectantly.

Not a demand then, but an admission. She just can’t be bothered to be polite about it.

Ruby’s cheeks twinge. She herself will never admit she enjoys it, the attention, but she takes the hand offered to her. Christina’s palm is soft and smooth, the fingers long, bony in places, tapering at the tips. They close around hers like talons as she meets Ruby’s gaze and presses a kiss on her knuckles.

Despite herself, Ruby feels a warmth blooming in her heart. The butterfly that has taken residence in her chest flutters its wings. She does not resist when Christina tugs lightly at her hand and turns to lead her up the basement stairs. When they reach the top, Christina lets go briefly only to close the door behind them before finding Ruby’s hand again and lacing their fingers together. Ruby hears the click but not the turn of the lock. The carelessness stands out because the woman rarely does anything without deliberation. Alarm bells should be sounding right now, Ruby thinks, but Christina makes no indication that she has anything in mind other than to lead Ruby into the bedroom.

* * *

The room situated in the north-wing of the manor is already familiar to Ruby. The hardwood furnishings and finely carved wooden moldings have greeted her more than once in the mornings after spending yet another night with Christina’s other version. She knows that to the left is a door that leads to the spacious bathroom. And to the right is a floor-to-ceiling bookcase filled with thick tomes with obscure titles and leather-bound classics stenciled with gold letterings.

There are candelabras in every corner, holding up to four candles each, which William likes to take the time to light up until the whole space is blazing in candleflame. A creature of habit, Christina picks up the match on the mantle and carefully lights each candle. The last one is on the nightstand. By the time she faces Ruby, the light from the dozens of lit candles has turned her blonde hair into burnished gold and her eyes luminous. She regards Ruby across the room, making no secret of her lust but making no move either.

Ruby realizes that, like the kiss, Christina is waiting. This time, the act is a provocation and not an exercise of restraint. She already knows her desire is reciprocated. It is this certainty, this unapologetic egotism, that has driven Ruby to reject William on instinct that first night at the bar, only to succumb a moment later. It is driving her now to step forward, barely resisting glancing at the bed.

Apparently, this is enough for Christina. She unfolds herself from the mantel and starts to reach behind her. Ruby only hears the zipper of her dress being lowered. She tries not to stare but the candlelight is licking a moving pattern across the soft, pale skin. She is so thin as to be almost scrawny but soft and round in places where William is lean and hard. Every single feature is perfect from the tips of her hair down to the toes of her feet. Her breasts…. Until tonight, it has never even occurred to Ruby that she might be a boob girl but here she is.

Christina appears entirely aware of her appeal. She shows no sign of modesty as she slowly undresses. It is only when Ruby does not do the same that she cocks an eyebrow and says with a gleeful twitch of her mouth, “I do like to unwrap my presents.”

Bristling slightly, Ruby steps off her heels and shrugs out of her bolero jacket. Christina is shimmying out of her underwear. Ruby glimpses long legs and tries not to stare. The buckle on her belt has suddenly become very complicated under fingers made clumsy with nervousness.

Christina, unabashedly nude, strides forward and steps right in her personal space. Her eyes seem to caress her face before snapping down, seeming to finally notice Ruby’s trouble. “Do you need help with that?” She asks with incongruous humor.

Ruby both hates and loves the fact that Christina has a full three inches on her. On the one hand, it’s a relief to not be the tallest woman in a room for once. On the other hand, it means she has to look up into those smirking blue eyes and know she’s lost this one.

Ruby has been downplaying the attraction she feels. She has just finished wrapping her mind around the fact that she might be half in love with the same person she half-despises. To feel this way, a trembling in her stomach, a sudden increase of her heartbeat, and to know that it is Christina, and always has been her, who is the cause of it – “Yes, damn you,” Ruby finally permits.

A flicker of emotion crosses Christina’s face briefly but it’s gone before Ruby can identify it. She lifts her hands to brush them up Ruby’s arms, the touch leaving little tingles of fire in their wake. They rest on top of her shoulders, cupping them as Christina leans down to whisper huskily in her ear, “There is no version of you, not a single part of you, that I do not worship.”

Ruby’s heart is already pounding hard, now it has practically risen to the base of her throat. She takes in a ragged breath as Christina leans back, eyes gleaming. Her fingers brush at the sides of Ruby’s neck while her free hand begins to undo the belt around her waist. She lets it drop with a thud, her hand already slipping under her suddenly loose top. She seems to be in no particular hurry. Each touch, every movement is attended with a sense of finality, of deliberation, like she knows something she can’t articulate and her hands are taking the place of speech.

Ruby closes her eyes, shielding them from her penetrating gaze. She only feels the cool night air on her naked skin as Christina peels off her top. Her touch lights a trail of small fires along her sides, under her breasts, breath warm along her collarbone and the angle of her jaw. She feels strong hands wrap around her back, feels the clasp of her brassiere being undone, hears Christina’s whispered “ _fuck_ ” when her breasts are finally freed and her hands are filled with them.

Christina is touching her like it’s the first time, eyes wide, lips slightly parted, expression as close to reverential as it is to ravenous. “Fuck, you’re magnificent,” she murmurs under her breath. Her touch is light, almost tentative, sensitizing Ruby’s skin and making her shiver with want.

“Christina,” she breathes.

Christina looks at her then, hard.

Then Ruby only feels herself being pushed into the bed. She supports her weight with one arm, the other wrapping around a tiny waist as Christina climbs unto her lap. She curls her long body until her mouth is hot against her breasts, taking deep breaths before lips close over a dusky nipple. Ruby trembles when Christina starts using tongue and teeth, causing the pressure between her thighs to turn into liquid heat. She grabs a clump of blonde hair only for her exploring lips to suckle slowly up her neck to her ear, nipping the soft skin lightly.

“Tell me what you want,” Christina urges her.

Ruby feels the ghost of fingers along her pelvis and between her legs. She grits her teeth but can’t help a moan from escaping when the same fingers slide over her mound, slick with wetness. “I want,” she swallows, breath shuddering when her digits find her clit and press with just enough pressure, “ _you_ to put your money where your mouth is and _fuck_ me.”

Christina’s pupils blow all the way up. She bares her teeth, eyes glinting, cheeks blossoming, before her mouth swoops down to kiss Ruby passionately, endlessly, relentlessly.

* * *

Ruby feels Christina press her down, deeper into the chasm of desire, feels her chokehold around her throat, her heart. Her mouth is a never-ending distraction. The scent and texture of her is everything Ruby remembers of the other, yet softer, sweeter, more sinful. The weight of her body is a luxury, a heady mix of hard angles and soft curves, that she wants to cradle and fold into her own, if she’d let her.

But Christina doesn’t relinquish control, not even when Ruby can feel her desire in the way her fingers tremble when she parts Ruby’s legs. She kneels before her supine body as though in worship, her eyes taking in every inch like she’s measuring flesh and deliberating how it fits.

It must not be right to want someone this much.

Ruby stares dazedly at the ceiling as pleasure spreads all the way to the tips of her fingers and toes. Even her scalp is tingling. She is _so_ good. So fucking good. That goddamned mouth of hers is always so devastatingly good. Maybe that’s why Ruby couldn’t help herself. Returning to William again and again despite knowing the truth about him. Christina or William, Ruby’s body responds the same way, her mind forgetting everything but the way she swirls her tongue like _that_ and leaves her a complete wreck.

Blue eyes glance up between spread thighs and a shroud of golden hair, drinking up the look on Ruby’s face as she falls apart and comes undone. Still, she doesn’t stop. Ruby is barely able to catch her breath when Christina crawls up her body to give her a kiss that tasted of her. Ruby can only hold her in a tight grip, gasping when Christina finds her again between her legs, insinuating, circling until Ruby’s breath is ragged. A graze of sharp incisors on a hardened nipple, a trill of her fingers on her sensitive bud, and then she slides home.

Christina drops her forehead so it presses against Ruby’s. Her breathing is labored, eyes dark and full of fire. Face to face, they regard each other silently for a few moments, her fingers still embedded within her. With her free hand, Christina smooths the frown from Ruby’s brow, and Ruby takes a shuddering breath, followed by another until she is moaning as Christina starts to move inside her, slow and deliberate, thumb pressing against her nub with each thrust.

Her second orgasm takes longer, slower, deeper. For a moment, there is nothing, not the dull yellow light from the candles lighting up the room, not the lies or the schemes or anything but pleasure. When Ruby opens her eyes, she finds Christina watching her, gaze strangely alight, her hand still cupping her between her legs. She reaches for her and Christina leans down, closing her eyes and accepting the tender kiss bestowed.

* * *

In the aftermath, their bodies lie folded around each other, so close as though they’re wearing each other’s skin, so close as to feel the rise of the other’s breast with each breath.

* * *

When Ruby wakes up from languorous sleep, it is dark outside. A silver moon has risen, its pale rays streaming in through the glass windows. The light from the candleflame cast abstract shadows around the room. Something is tickling her cheek. She feels a shift and realizes that Christina is awake next to her.

“Tell me something,” Christina says. Her voice still carries the traces of sleep but her tone is alert, signaling that she’s been awake for some time.

A creeping sense of dread comes over Ruby as the thought of the unlocked basement door comes to her unbidden. Christina has her back turned to her. She is lying still. “What do you have in mind?” She asks, keeping her voice even.

After some length, Christina glances at her over her shoulder. Her gaze immediately strays to Ruby’s naked breasts that the sheets around them fail to cover. “Hmm,” she hums, shifting her weight so they could face each other.

A strand of blonde hair falls across her face and Ruby makes an unconscious move to lift it, brushing her fingers across her cheek as she does. She catches Christina blinking up at her, eyes unreadable. “I wonder,” she says, clearing her throat, allowing her hand to drop on the space between them.

Christina shifts again, moving closer and reaching for the sheets to tug them down until they bunch near Ruby’s legs. “Yes,” she prompts, staring in fascination at the sight before her.

“If your father never taught you magic,” Ruby pauses, breath hitching a little as Christina’s hand follows the path her gaze takes, “how did you come to know so much about it?”

“William,” Christina says absently.

“William,” Ruby repeats, forgetting momentarily that a real William, not the fabrication that Christina wears sometimes, did exist once.

“Yes.” Christina moves her hand across Ruby’s stomach, tracing an invisible pattern all over her skin. “He showed me magic, he taught me, when I knew nothing of it.”

Ruby studies the pensive look that has come over her face. “…Did you love him?” She has always been…curious about that.

“I suppose.” Warm breath fans across Ruby’s chest, the top of her breasts.

Christina’s preoccupation with Ruby’s body while she talks about her dead lover is vaguely unsettling but her tongue is tasting an already hardened nipple and Ruby finds herself cradling Christina’s nape. Desire is stoked and she feels that familiar throbbing between her thighs. This is insane, Ruby thinks even as a small part of her tells her it’s no more insane than Christina choosing to wear, again and again, the skin of that same dead lover, going about her days, scheming, planning, _fucking._

“For a time, he was everything to me,” Christina is saying, her long lashes forming half-moons on her cheeks. She is brushing her hand along Ruby’s hip and sliding the palm over the round backside. “And for a time, I thought I was everything to him.”

Ruby doesn’t ask anymore what happened. Christina has told her the tale. But something in her voice (the way she takes on a derisive tone when she admits that weakness – that _blunder_ ) fills Ruby with a kind of terror. She thinks again of the unlocked door to the basement and the vial of blood sitting there, waiting. The vial that Leti needs.

Christina doesn’t look up but her hand continues its caress. “Ruby, is there something you want to tell me?” Her manner is soft and measured.

Ruby feels her heart hammering so loud she’s afraid Christina will hear it. “I’m sorry,” she blurts out.

“For what?” Piercing blue eyes meet and hold Ruby’s gaze.

“For William,” she says. “For what happened.” She has never known the man. Still, the thought of his body, more dead than alive, lying there in the basement, in the dark, waiting, with nobody for company but the husk of what was once known as Dell, fills her with a foreboding sense of premonition.

Christina stares at her for a moment, then shakes her head. “You really are, aren’t you?” She brushes Ruby’s cheek with her knuckles. There is genuine bewilderment on her face. “Why?”

Ruby doesn’t answer.

“He’s helped me more now than he’s ruined me by dying,” she says with horrifying nonchalance.

Ruby can’t help herself. “He was your lover.”

“And I wear his love around me every day.”

_Every day she experiences his dying._

Ruby stares at her.

Desire is something Ruby has known most of her life. She knows it as a simple thing. Easy to set aside from all other emotions. Easy to satisfy. Without attachment, it is easy enough to replace. The desires of men, Ruby knows well. But this – this amoral, self-serving monomaniacal lust that Christina harbors is unknowable. Terrible. In it, she sees a city of chaos and it makes her heart… _break._ Not for this fiend with the pale eyes, cold even under the warmth of the candlelight. Not even for the woman whose body is warm against hers, whose touch lights up fires inside her even now.

She weeps inside, knowing what she has to do now, knowing what it will cost, knowing she’s been halfway to falling all along and already completely doomed.

**Author's Note:**

> Aight, time to close my laptop and go to sleep.
> 
> Edit 11/12/2020: Forgot to add that the title comes from Pablo Neruda's Sonnet XVII.


End file.
